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The thing that struck me from those stats is that the millionaires in the IRS data, on average, either didn't have the majority of their net worth tied up in either the stock market or a single business.

When we have talked to the Fidelity people and mention TIPS or I bonds, it just seems to be something outside their trained talking points. They will say you need stocks for growth, and we'll say well we have TIPS, I bonds, SS and a pension with COLA, a CD ladder, floating rate funds and a fixed rate mortgage and and they just give us a blank look and repeat, you need stocks for growth.

Then they have also mentioned needing 80% of gross annual income for retirement, which is silly because we weren't spending 80% of gross income on living expenses while we were both working megacorp jobs.

So we have grown pretty skeptical about anything they tell us, and maybe even the whole mutual fund idea in general.

I don't have any answers. I am just trying to think outside the box. Call me stupid, maybe I am, but I am not so sure, especially the older we get, that putting a majority of our life savings into stock mutual funds and expecting them to go down 50% in a given year is such a great idea.

I struggle with my investable assets, too. Especially since I have a pension that more than covers all my needs. My assets are small compared to the self funding retirement people on this forum, but I still want it to grow reasonably without undo risk, even though my intentions are to never use it. I already have enough stock exposure for my needs and dump $500 a month into Total Stock Index. I have about 50k in pay nothing short term CDs and passbook savings. I already buy the limit on IBonds yearly. I really want to put this 50k in a TIPS or 5-10 year treasury note, but don't know when to pull the trigger. Everything I read says TIPS are horrible in a rising interest rate, low inflation environment like we presently are in. It is never this simple, but I wish the treasury would quit buying altogether and see if the 5-10's shot up with no corresponding jump in inflation, then I would just dump it all in at 4%. I am willing to wait a year, but with my luck I will give up and do something dumb with it at the wrong time.

I struggle with my investable assets, too. Especially since I have a pension that more than covers all my needs. My assets are small compared to the self funding retirement people on this forum, but I still want it to grow reasonably without undo risk, even though my intentions are to never use it. I already have enough stock exposure for my needs and dump $500 a month into Total Stock Index. I have about 50k in pay nothing short term CDs and passbook savings. I already buy the limit on IBonds yearly. I really want to put this 50k in a TIPS or 5-10 year treasury note, but don't know when to pull the trigger. Everything I read says TIPS are horrible in a rising interest rate, low inflation environment like we presently are in. It is never this simple, but I wish the treasury would quit buying altogether and see if the 5-10's shot up with no corresponding jump in inflation, then I would just dump it all in at 4%. I am willing to wait a year, but with my luck I will give up and do something dumb with it at the wrong time.

We sold most of the TIPS earlier this year when rising rates seemed like more of a sure thing. Yields had gone so low there wasn't much downside to selling and doing a little profit taking.

We decided now to probably build a TIPS ladder before too long with some of our retirement money and future rates can do what they will. We'll get the laddered average.

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